Paradigm Shiftish
by Ar-Zimraphel
Summary: "Paradigm Shift: a radical change in belief or approach." How Tony and Pepper form a stableish relationship. Immediately follows Iron Man 2.
1. Chapter 1

**"Paradigm Shift-ish"**

_A sudden and radical change in belief or perception._

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

Tony falls asleep in the suit.

They haven't been inside the East 79th St. townhouse for ten minutes when Pepper returns to the parlor to find him flat on his back on an antique tufted leather Chesterfield.

For one awful moment, she thinks he's dead.

But then an armor-clad arm shifts to rest against the chest-plate and Pepper has never in her life felt so relieved to hear the thrum of servos and the clink of metal on metal.

Tony looks like a bad surrealist painting; ruined helmet perched on an antique chess table in the foreground, red-and-gold-plated man lounging on priceless furniture in the background.

The part of Pepper that is still a little hysterical wants to wake him up, just in case. The part of her that has just kissed this man wants to hold his (still gauntleted) hand and cry.

Asleep, it is painfully obvious that Tony is ill. He bears dark smudges under his eyes, the lines of his face are sharp, his crows' feet more pronounced than ever. Even unconscious, the lines of his forehead are furrowed in a grimace.

"_Yes, for the moment I'm not dying_."

He'd sounded nonchalant, a little bored, using his 'next, please!' voice to barrel past the fact that he wasn't dead. Even now, Pepper doesn't know if she's furious or hurt or terrified. She suspects it's all of the above.

It had taken them three hours to give statements to the police (...and the Feds, and the Guard, and every three-letter organization in the book). It had taken another two hours to get out of Flushing, rendezvous with Happy and fight the traffic into Manhattan. She and Tony had both spent the car ride on speaker, cycling through Paterson, Bloomberg, Fury, and what had seemed like half of the Department of Homeland Security.

Happy had brought them to the curb, loaned Tony his jacket (which, to no one's surprise, did not cover much less render inconspicuous the Iron Man suit), and stayed to park the car.

And now, Tony is asleep.

Pepper stares at him for a moment until she finally looks down at her BlackBerry and texts: '_J-how to remove Mark VI by hand?_'

The answer comes back fast.

_Mark VI employs custom XZN variant screw drives. Manual disassembly not suggested. E 79 houses disassembly apparatus on 2F._

"Thank you, JARVIS," Pepper mutters to herself, relieved that if she can just get Tony to the second floor, they'll at least be able to get the suit off. She sets down the phone on the side table and steps forward to crouch beside him, her heels digging into the antique Oriental rug.

She reaches down and unbuckles the straps, slipping her feet out of the constricting shoes and digging her toes into the wool. Barefoot, It feels strangely intimate for her to be here kneeling beside him as he sleeps, exhausted.

Her phone is buzzing, but she ignores it in favor of reaching for one of Tony's hands, still encased in the gauntlets. She hasn't done this very much, but she is familiar enough with the suit's workings that she thinks she'll be able to at least get some of the pieces off, even if the suit does seem to be a new model.

Her fingers scrape against the scuffed and dented metal until finally she finds what she's looking for. She slips her thumbnail into the catch and pushes it, and the forearm panels separate with a hiss of escaping pressurized air.

It's a tight squeeze, but it's enough. She pulls his hand free of its metal casing and sets the glove down on the chess table, taking his hand in hers.

"If you wanted to compromise my virtue, all you need to do is ask."

Tony's voice is roughened, weary, but playful. And instead of a quick riposte or even an eye roll, Pepper is dismayed to find that she has tears in her eyes.

She swallows sharply and leans away from him in an effort to hide her embarrassment, but his freed hand grabs her biceps and stops her short. "Hey," he says, and she can hear his discomfort even though she's not looking at him. "Come on. Knock that off."

Two parts concerned and one part indignant, his tone is enough to make her smile a little, but just for a moment. She keeps her gaze away from him and reaches up to scrub at her eyes. "Sorry," she mumbles, and she can feel her cheeks warm in a way that they never have no matter what innuendo he's tossed at her over the years.

The whir and thrum of the suit means he's moving, sitting up. She rolls back onto her heels, shrugs out of his hold on her arm and stands up swiftly. "I should get that," she says, because she can't think of anything else. Her BlackBerry buzzes again, beeps twice for another missed call.

"Pepper," Tony says firmly, and she finds herself meeting his eyes despite herself. He stands up, and is it her imagination, or is he swaying a little? "I'm fine," he tells her quietly. "Really."

The words fly out before she has a chance to vet them. "Would you even tell me if you weren't?"

He blinks at her for a second, then releases a heavy sigh. "I deserve that."

"Yeah."

There's a moment of awkward silence between them. Tony looks at her intently, his eyes dark and intense and his entire body still. "I did try," he says finally, and his tone is quiet, sincere. There's no reproach in his voice, but Pepper hears it there anyway.

The sting of tears and the consuming guilt combine and Pepper throws herself at him, arms wrapping around the twisted and gouged metal of the suit and face pressed tight against his cheek. It's an unwieldy embrace; the suit was made for a lot of things, but not this. It only lasts for so long until the uncomfortable dig of the metal into her chest makes her lean back.

He doesn't let her get far. Instead, he strips off the other gauntlet, drops it onto the floor with a muffled clunk and takes her shoulders in her hands. Her shoes off and him in the suit, he is much taller and if it wasn't strange before, the fact that she's looking up at him is enough to make this even more surreal.

The kiss on the roof was fueled by a mix of desperation, anger, relief, passion. This one is gentler, and Pepper doesn't even realize it's happening until his mouth is hot on hers, lips soft but a little chapped. The kiss is chaste at first, until the flutter of anxiety and nerves and passion in her stomach make her stand on her tiptoes, place her hands on his cheeks and really _kiss _him.

When they break apart, he's grinning and she's panting a little, out of breath. "Still got it," he tells her cheekily, and she looks up at him, one eyebrow crooked.

"You never _had _it," she tells him shortly and his smile fades a little.

"You're right," he tells her seriously. "But Pepper, I-"

She shakes her head. "Not now," she tells him firmly, and takes a deep breath. To her surprise, he actually falls silent.

She raps a knuckle on the chest-plate. "JARVIS told me the equipment to get this off is on the second floor."

He nods, opens his mouth to say something inappropriate, and decides better of it. "Yeah. Moved it here from the Expo, thought it might be handy."

"Can you walk?"

She knows they were just kissing, knows that he'd told her he's fine, but she's sure now that she had seen him sway a little, and the damage to his suit means that he's going to be hurting tomorrow.

"Is that a serious question?" His wry tone tells Pepper that he's laughing at her on the inside, and she doesn't have the patience for it.

"Tony."

"Yes, I can walk. Come on, let's strip down." He winks at her and she pretends not to see it, because that's what she always does.

It takes them several minutes to get upstairs. Tony _is _tired, and his exhaustion in conjunction with the narrow staircase means that by the time they've made it to the second floor, Pepper has mentally filed away a list of drywall and paneling damage that will need to be repaired.

Judging from the missing furniture and the stacked Stark Industries crates, Tony apparently intends to set up one of the larger spare bedrooms as a second launch pad. The disassembly robots are powered-down and the only other equipment Pepper sees is a sheet of smart glass along the longest wall.

Tony strides over to the glass and claps his hands impatiently, waiting for the display to come alive. "Let's go, look alive," he instructs.

"Can I do anything?" Pepper asks after a moment. The login screen sequence has begun and Tony looks back at her with a small grin.

"I got it. You just enjoy the show," he tells her with a smirk and turns back to the glass. This time Pepper doesn't hide her smile.

He taps in a few commands and the robots boot up. By the time they've arranged themselves around the makeshift launch pad, it takes ten minutes for the armor to come apart, until all the various parts are scattered around the room like some kind of suburban dad's Christmas Eve nightmare.

Outside of the suit, Tony is diminished. The neoprene bodysuit hides nothing, and without either the layers of metal or a carefully tailored suit jacket, it's suddenly obvious to Pepper that he's lost weight and muscle mass.

How had she not noticed?

Tony extracts his feet from the boots-the last pieces to go-and then picks his way carefully across the minefield of red and silver and gold metal.

"Come on," Pepper says needlessly, as he reaches her and wraps a heavy arm around her waist, burying his face in her shoulder.

Never mind that they'd spent ten minutes downstairs kissing; the suddenness of the physical embrace, the shock of feeling him against her without any kind of barrier between them-it is enough to surprise Pepper into non-reaction.

"Smell good," he mumbles into her collarbone, and his breath and lips and beard tickles and jolts her out of her surprise.

"You don't," she replies tartly, winding her own arm around his back. "Shower time, let's go."

"A little forward of you, Potts, but if you insist," he says, and she can feel his smile against her skin.

Pepper rolls her eyes and steps towards the doorway, and his arm slides from her hip to grasp her hand in his. He lifts hers to his mouth, kisses the knuckles, makes eye contact. "Pepper, I-"

Again she cuts him off with a sharp little nod. "Shower time," she repeats, and she pretends not to notice the confusion in his eyes, the uncertainty.

She pulls him into the hallway and they walk down to the master bedroom in silence.

When they're two-thirds of the way there, he suddenly stumbles and slips against the wall with a heavy thump. Her throat goes tight and she is afraid, more afraid than she had been seeing the drone's chest piece glow red, more afraid than the moment that she'd gone from standing on the terrace to one thousand feet in the air.

"Tony? Tony, are you all right?"

He's leaning against the wall, and breathing hard, and his face is pale in the dim light. "I'm just-a little dizzy," he admits to her without meeting her eyes. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

"Stop saying you're fine, you are clearly not fine," she snaps at him and wraps his arm around her shoulder with the ease of practice. She has done this many times over the past ten years when Tony would come stumbling back to the Malibu house or the hotel or anywhere really, so stupid drunk that he could barely walk.

It's a lot easier without stilettos on.

"Come on, Tony," she whispers, and it occurs to her that all the lines between them over the past years, all of the barriers and borders have been torn down. She has no idea what to do or how to handle this. It's terrifying.

They make it to the bedroom and he immediately slumps onto the bed, still breathing heavily. She goes immediately to the bathroom, grabs a towel and holds it under the faucet, her hands steady despite the quick pitter-patter of her pulse in her ears, and rushes back out, the slap of her bare feet sounding strange in the silence.

He looks up at her, smiling and his eyes half-hooded. "Hey."

She holds the towel up to his forehead, feels the heat radiating off him and the problem is suddenly clear. For all his flaws and mistakes and outrageous behavior, Pepper has always been able to more or less trust him. Tony is honest because he is accountable to no one, because he enjoys the shock value of telling the absolute truth, and because he's actually a damn bad liar.

Or so Pepper had thought.

The towel drips cool water into his eyes, back into his sweaty hair, down his cheeks. He sighs. "Feels good."

"Do you think you have a fever?"

He shakes his head. "Just tired. And I haven't, ah, eaten anything in a while. Can't keep anything down, really."

The sight of those ubiquitous green smoothies-god, Tony had been going through them like gangbusters. She'd even put in a standing order for kale, wheatgrass, spinach and every other green thing at the local Whole Foods a few months ago, once the onetime hangover cure had turned into a daily regimen. She hadn't even realized that he'd stopped eating other things.

Part of her wants to laugh. She'd known something was going on, yes, but the famously competent Pepper Potts hadn't even noticed that her boss was _dying_.

He yawns once, then reaches up to the zipper at his throat and fiddles with it. "Should get changed."

"Yeah," Pepper says, taking the towel from his forehead and standing up again. "I'll find something for you to wear."

He has a full closet here, just as he does at every other house. She steps inside and begins to search for something he can sleep in. She finds a lot of suits and dress shirts, but not much else.

She spots a chest of drawers beneath the closet bar, and retrieves an undershirt from the top drawer-crisp and new, it's not one of his well-worn MIT tee shirts, but it is better than nothing. Another drawer yields a pair of boxer-briefs and sweatpants, which she tosses over her arm.

By the time she steps back into the bedroom, Tony's flight suit is a crumpled, sweaty mess on the floor and he is fast asleep in the bed, sprawled facedown into the pillows and top-sheet haphazardly pulled up to his hips.

She exhales deeply, trying to get rid of the tension in her chest along with the CO2. She wants to crawl in beside him, to hold him in her arms and listen to him breathing. Instead, she folds the clothes in a neat pile on the bedside table, crosses over to the bathroom to turn off the light, and settles down in the antique Morris chair by the window with her phone. She intends to stay awake, to monitor Tony and the 24-hour news channels and Stark Industries, but it's so late at night that it would be more accurate to call it early morning, and now that the adrenaline is leaving her system she's just so tired, and...

Pepper wakes up warm, and lethargic, and relaxed. One heavy arm is draped around her waist, and when she curls her toes she can feel Tony's feet against hers, cool and still.

She smiles, relieved to finally be here with him. She feels the press of the reactor against her back, hears its hum and it occurs to her that she has been waiting for this day for a long time. Waking up with Tony.

The silk of her nightgown slips soft against her thighs as she turns to face him, and he doesn't protest when she takes his fingers in hers, gives a kiss to one of the scuffed knuckles.

His face is slack, mouth slightly open in his sleep and the lines she'd observed on him when he'd fallen asleep in the suit are gone. His skin is still pale, the difference in tone dramatic against his dark hair.

She reaches up to press her palm against his face. "Good morning, Tony," she whispers, trying to aim her morning breath away from him.

He doesn't respond and Pepper suddenly realizes that his arm is still wrapped over her ribcage, his face is smooth, and his thighs against hers are firm and cool.

He's not dreaming; his eyes are unmoving beneath his eyelids.

It takes her a second to realize that he's not breathing either.

She shrieks and pulls herself away from his frozen embrace, the stiff arm that clutches her body to his, her feet scramble and twist and her heart is pounding-oh, god-

"Pepper!"

Pepper opens her eyes.

"Relax," Tony says, staring at her with concern. Her shoulders are gripped in his hands. "You were just dreaming."

Her stomach is in her throat and Pepper is afraid she's going to throw up but she can't take her eyes off of him, his scruffy and bruised face that's still just a little bit pale, the shock of dark hair that's not artfully mussed so much as actual bed-head.

She opens her mouth to speak but instead of words a hoarse croak comes out. She licks her lips and tries again. "What-what time is it?"

"It's, ah-eight thirty," Tony tells her after checking his wristwatch. "Are you all right?"

The image of Tony, pale and cool and dead, suddenly superimposes itself onto the real, alive Tony and Pepper shuts her eyes tightly to escape it. "Fine."

"'Stop saying you're fine, you're clearly not fine,'" Tony parrots back to her what seems to be a strange mix of Katharine Hepburn and falsetto. "Isn't that what you said?"

Pepper opens her eyes to shoot him a glare that's half serious and half amused. The shock and horror that she had dreamt are dissipating along with her troubled sleep and she takes a single deep breath. "Just a bad dream."

She takes a second to look at him, and realizes somewhat belatedly that he's buck naked.

"Tony...!" It's not that's she has never seen him in the buff before-in fact, she's willing to bet that she has seen Tony Stark naked more times than any other woman on the planet, which is a bizarre kind of achievement-but it's different. It feels intimate.

He looks down at himself, and then back at her, and grins. "You screamed, Potts," he tells her pragmatically. "I came running."

Nonetheless, he sits back down on the bed and covers his lower half with the sheet. "What were you dreaming about?"

"I-Tony, we need to get up," Pepper says after a moment, using her crisp and professional tone to change the subject. She looks down at herself and winces at her wrinkled dress. Her neck aches from an unintentional sleep in a very old and and not-terribly-comfortable recliner.

"I'm up," Tony says, in a very specific tone that leaves unsaid the "_in more ways than one_" that Pepper knows he's dying to tack on.

She glances back at him, and sees it.

Dark, veiny lines, extending out into his chest for the radius of the reactor. Unnatural tributaries that have settled blackly beneath his skin in strange angles and patterns. Pepper is horrified.

He sees it on her face, and looks down at his chest. "It should fade," he offers helpfully. "JARVIS says they're subcutaneous lesions that should fade once the Palladium is fully out of my system and the area has a chance to heal."

Pepper barely hears him. "Palladium," she repeats dumbly, still staring at the literal, actual proof that Tony was poisoned. That he'd been dying.

"Um, yes. I had to, ah, I had to synthesize a new element in the shop. Well, synthesize it in a stable form so that it could be sustained, you know, because any jerk-off can fool around with a particle accelerator and slam together some Ununoctium. Sustaining Starkidium was the hard part. That's what I think I'm going to call it, by the way: Starkidium. Or Starkonium. Maybe Howardium, after my dad." Tony pauses in his babbling . "Would you say no to Pepperidium?"

At that Pepper tears her gaze from the lesions on his chest and back to his face. He looks strangely earnest, apologetic, uncertain. It's an unusual combination, and she realizes that he's trying to explain, trying to show her something.

"That's what... that's what Natalie meant, the new chest piece?" Pepper motions towards the triangular implant. "I noticed the new suit."

He nods. "Yeah."

"And the Palladium... it was poisoning you?"

Another nod. "It's a semi-toxic heavy metal," he explains. "Exposed to my bloodstream in the reactor... well, it was bad news. But I'm fine now. I fixed it. Brilliantly, I might add. Might even get a Nobel Prize for it, if I wanted to tell anyone. Which I don't. Well, maybe a little."

Pepper takes a deep breath. "You're sure?"

He nods. "Yep. Gonna have JARVIS check my math as soon as we're back in Malibu."

Pepper looks at him carefully. "Okay," she says, and a second later Tony has reached out for her hands and pulled her from her chair and over to his mouth; she is startled enough that she lets it happen, even though she's standing and he's still very naked with only a sheet between them.

She supposes that it shouldn't feel like they're moving fast-given that they've followed the _When Harry Met Sally _timeline of romance-but it does.

Tony stops the kiss and smiles at her. "I could really get used to this."

The last of her anxiety melts away, and Pepper takes what feels like her first breath of the day. "Me too," she tells him, enjoying Tony's suddenly wide eyes. "After you shower."

TBC

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><p><strong>Notes<strong>

**Paterson** and **Bloomberg** are David Paterson, then-governor of New York, and Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City (and fellow billionaire). **Ununoctium **is synthetic element no. 118, also called Uuo and the heaviest element in the Periodic Table.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: HUGE thank you to the delightful and talented robot iconography for BETA-ing this chapter for me. Thank you, dear friend!**

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><p>"I think you're winning the staring contest."<p>

Pepper blinks and looks away from her cooling mug of coffee and over to Tony. Hair damp, face flushed from the heat of his shower, Tony looks almost normal.

He's got a suit-jacket flung over his shoulder, his tie undone, and he's grinning at her. Pepper has seen this enough to know he's posing but trying very hard not to seem like he is. She wants to toss out a light-hearted "Hey there, GQ" but she doesn't.

Instead: "You're dressed."

"Well spotted. Now come on, help me with this tie." Tony reaches up for the dark green tie hanging around his neck and pulls it off in one dramatic sweep of his hand. He strides over to her, dangling the tie in front of her face like some kind of prize.

She takes it from him by force of habit. For the first few months she'd worked for him, Tony had convinced her he'd never learned to tie a tie. ("I went to prep school when I was like, eleven, Pepper: I wore clip-ons" and "My father promised to teach me the Stark knot when I turned 21 and he never got the chance... Please, Pepper?").

Then one night at a gala for some foundation or another, she'd walked into the ladies' room to find him whipping up a perfect Pratt (though the tie itself had been marred by some very unflattering lipstick). She had typed up her resignation the moment she'd arrived at home. She'd built up quite a collection of those letters in the early days.

But now she's known him ten years, and he asks her to tie his tie because she does a perfect Full Windsor and because it's an opportunity for him to invade her personal space with no repercussions. And an opportunity for her to let him.

Tony steps closer to her, eyebrows raised, and Pepper studiously ignores him and she straightens out the strip of silk he'd handed her.

They had kissed the night before. They'd kissed on the roof and in the parlor but now in the bright light of day, the kisses seem very far away.

Pepper chances a quick glance and finds him watching her, his brow furrowed and his gaze intense, and even though she has occasionally been the recipient of that look, he has never been so overt, so obvious. She swallows. "Tony."

"You don't have to tie it, you're not my assistant," says Tony abruptly. "You're the CEO. I mean, you can if you want-but you don't have to. It's not your job."

It's Pepper's turn to stare. "What?"

He shrugs. "You know, the tie. I'm not going to ask you to go grab my dry cleaning either, I mean, not that I have any here, all I have is the suit upstairs-"

Pepper presses a hand to his chest, right beside the reactor that's glowing faintly through the pale green dress shirt. "Tony," she repeats. She can feel the warmth of him and the new reactor (had he really called it Pepperidium?).

He stops talking, looks down at her hand, then back to her face. "Yeah?"

"First of all, I told you that I'm resigning." Pepper is sure about this; as much as she wants to run the company, as much as she appreciates the gesture in her nearly twelve hours of hindsight, only Tony can ever be the CEO of Stark Industries.

Tony bites his lip, tilts his head back. "Okay," he begins, dragging out the word, "See, no. I just don't think so-"

"Second of all," Pepper interrupts, now reaching around his neck to lay the tie flat and pull the ends to the right lengths, "I wouldn't go get your imaginary dry cleaning even if you asked me to."

"Right. Because you're not my assistant, you're the boss. That's my point."

"No," she says firmly, in the tone she uses for serious things. Like the time he'd announced: 'Pepper, I've decided. I want the Saturn V replica they've got at Kennedy Space Center. Can you have it delivered to the Malibu house?'

"Come on, why not? I already told you before, you're perfect for the job, you know everything-"

Her fingers pull and smooth and loop the silk of his tie without her really paying attention. "I'm not perfect for the job, Tony. I can be a CEO, just not CEO of Stark Industries."

He's silent, and she focuses her gaze on the tie, tries to ignore the nearness of him.

"Where'd you learn to do this, anyway?"

Pepper glances up at him. "What are you talking about? I've been working for Stark Industries for-"

"No, not that," Tony says, waving his hand dismissively. "This." He jerks his chin down towards the tie, so suddenly that his goatee hits her hand as she's looping it around for the final time.

It's not exactly a personal question. It's not, 'who was your first date?' or 'what was your favorite band growing up?', but Tony just doesn't do small talk. He doesn't ask Pepper questions, like why she likes wine or vintage art-deco advertisements or old records.

She looks up at him, and makes eye contact for a split second before dropping her gaze to the nearly complete knot. He's still, and quiet, and waiting for the answer.

She is annoyed that she's surprised by it.

She clears her throat. "Um, from my grandfather. He was a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II. They're only allowed to wear Double Windsors."

"I didn't know that." He sounds almost bewildered, and she's pretty sure he's not talking about the sartorial requirements of the RAF. It's as though the thought of her having her own history, her own little experiences that have shaped her, is totally foreign to him.

She wonders if she should be dismayed by that or pleased that he's had the realization that she isn't just the Earth to his Sun.

The tie is knotted. She steps back from him, smooths down the skirt of last night's dress, keeps her eyes away from him. When he grabs her wrist in his hand, it's a surprise.

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"You know what. The thing you're doing-you're not even _looking _at me, Pepper, don't think-I mean, I am noticing. I do notice some things. You said it wasn't weird."

He sounds unsure, uncomfortable, and he's doing the thing where he gets out half of a thought before moving on to the next one.

Pepper takes a deep breath. "It's not weird." Her voice lilts up on the second syllable of "weird" and she cringes.

"Is that a question?" He's almost angry now, confused.

She swallows. Meets his eyes. His gaze is forceful, intense, and she feels such a rush of warmth at the sight of him that for just a second, her doubts are eased. She wants this, she does; she is relieved and excited that the thing between them has finally been acknowledged, finally realized. But she is totally and completely terrified.

Tony can be observant when he cares enough to be. And Pepper realizes that despite his behavior of the past few months, particularly since Monaco, he is now as alert and on his game as she's ever seen him. And not because he's solving a problem in his basement or on the prowl in a club or making a laughingstock of a Senate hearing.

Because of her.

She can tell the moment he recognizes the fear in her, because his lips tighten and his eyes go dark. "Pepper-I didn't kiss you-it wasn't because I was-when I came to your office, with the strawberries-and I _am _sorry about that-what I was trying to say is, and I'm trying to say it now-"

She's being unfair, Pepper suddenly realizes. They've been circling, ducking, winding around one another for years. And Tony's not the only one who doesn't know how to put words to what's between them.

"I need you too."

"-Basically, Pepper, it's like-what did you say?"

It feels like peeling off a pair of socks after a long day. Pepper smiles at him, and delights when he grins back, even though she knows he's still not sure he heard her correctly.

She steps closer to him, twists her wrist out of his grip and takes his hand in hers instead. "Tony, I wasn't listening when you came to see me-I was angry and frustrated-"

"Well, yeah, I was-I was a dick," Tony interrupts her, and he looks vaguely surprised to hear himself say the words. "I am-I am sorry. I was-well-"

_Dying_.

"You were a dick," Pepper agrees with him, and when one eyebrow lifts she knows that he's just barely holding back a comment. "But I'm serious. I need you too."

And then he grins for real. "Well, yeah," he says, and the serious moment is broken.

Pepper laughs. He preens. It's the easiest moment they've spent together in months.

Eventually, Tony looks down to their clasped hands, and almost tentatively places his other hand on her hip. His palm is solid, warm against her hipbone, and even though they're just standing there, Pepper is suddenly and completely _aware_ of him.

She can feel his breath on her cheek, taste the mint of his toothpaste, and when his thumb digs into the cleft between her hip and her stomach, she imagines that she can feel his pulse against her skin.

She looks up at him, and their eyes meet. It's an instant struggle not to turn away, not to break the moment. She has spent the past ten years looking away from him.

She's only just realized that she's the only one whose eyes he seeks out. Tony hates eye contact. He avoids it at all costs, because his eyes are the one part of him that his bravado doesn't reach.

He suddenly leans forward, presses his cheek against hers, lips against her ear, and-

"Good morning, Boss."

They both spin around to look at the intruder. Pepper releases his hand. Tony doesn't let go of her hip.

Happy looks uncomfortable. Natalie looks bored.

"Way to be a wingman, Hap," Tony mutters, quietly enough that the bodyguard only catches the gist. The former boxer flushes pink.

"It's nearly nine-thirty," Natalie announces calmly, as if nothing odd was going on. "DHS and FBI agents are already at Stark New York Headquarters. We're waiting on Langley and the Pentagon. FBI has shut out the NYPD and the state police. Director Fury is briefing everyone right now."

It takes a second for Pepper to realize that Natalie is definitely not just a new hire from Legal.

"SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanov, Ms. Potts," Natalie says as though she'd read Pepper's mind. "I've been assigned to Mr. Stark for some time now."

Pepper definitely does not have the time to deal with that. She files it away for later. "When are we expected at the office?"

"Ten o'clock, Ms. Potts."

"And my spare clothes at my New York office?"

"Dry-cleaned and in the foyer."

"Any word from New York Hospital Center or Elmhurst? Or any of the others?"

Hesitation flits across Natalie's face for a split second, and it disappears so quickly that Pepper doubts she had seen it at all. "Four dead, three hundred and twelve injuries at last tally."

Tony's hand slides heavily from her hip. Pepper can feel him slump against the kitchen countertop. She doesn't know what to do, so she keeps going.

"How bad-" Pepper has to stop to clear her throat, because her mouth's just gone dry-"How bad are the injuries?"

_Four dead_. Four dead on her watch.

"Who died? What were their names?" Tony asks abruptly. His voice is rough, and when Pepper chances a glance at him she is frightened by his suddenly pale face. "How did they die?"

"Two were trampled," Natalie replies swiftly. "They were both in the Elmhurst ICU until this morning. One in a car collision leaving the Expo. One from debris from the Hall A ceiling."

Tony lets out a heavy gust of air. "We've gotta do something." His voice is tight.

"We will," Pepper interjects, looking at Tony with concern. He suddenly seems small in the dress shirt and tie. Deflated. Tired. "Natalie, what about the injuries?"

"Mostly minor, though reports are still coming in. Lacerations, bruising, a few broken bones, et cetera," she reports. "There are seven reported serious cases. Two still in ICU, critical condition. The other five were serious, upgraded to fair condition as of this morning, prognosis optimistic. One of them is a cop."

"That's good," Pepper says somewhat distantly. _Four dead_. _Four dead on her watch._

"Legal is flying in some of the big brains from Inglewood and Cleveland," Natalie continues. "Matheson and Linderhoff are requesting a meeting ASAP. I told them this afternoon. NYPD and the D.A.'s office are also pushing for time, and they want Mr. Stark in the room as well. I'm waiting on Matheson's ETA before giving them the okay."

"Don't even get the NYPD's hopes up," Pepper instructs. "This is a jurisdictional nightmare as it is. And the D.A. is going to take at least three no's before listening. If Brown is calling us himself, double that. Frankly, I'm not sure we should even talk to the brass before Matheson gets here."

"Yes, Ms. Potts."

It takes 20 minutes for her to get changed and presentable. By the time she exits the ground floor bath, Tony has disappeared and Happy and Natalie-Natasha, whatever-are nowhere to be found.

She can guess easily enough where Tony's gone, at least. She climbs the stairwell to the second floor, running her hand over some the damage he'd inflicted the previous night, and ducks inside the makeshift launch pad.

Sure enough, he's there. But he's not fiddling with equipment, or pouring engine grease over his hands or whatever he likes to do. Instead, he's just standing.

He looks ready to go. Even the pocket square is folded into one of the elaborate, origami-like confections he occasionally amuses himself with. Sunglasses shade his eyes, even from her.

Hands in his pockets, Tony is uncharacteristically still.

"Tony?"

He doesn't seem to hear her.

She bites down her natural impulse ("Tony, come on. We're going to be late. Let's go.") in favor of something softer. She steps across the armor-strewn floor and over to his side, where she just stands for a few moments.

"I shut down Rhodey's armor this morning," he says suddenly. "Bricked it. Once Natasha got it rebooted last night, JARVIS got in and essentially reinstalled himself, so it was a no-brainer. Made sure he wasn't in it first, of course."

"Of course," Pepper agrees. She wouldn't admit it to him out loud, but in comparison to the Optimus Prime-inspired look that the U.S. Air Force and Justin Hammer had concocted, she actually finds the Iron Man suit rather tasteful.

"Classic Hammer work on that one. Add shit that doesn't work, a half ton of tactical webbing, and ruin the paint job. I'm surprised they didn't paint it over with tiger stripes."

Tony glances over at her, sees her smile. "I'm serious. They took a 'vette and spot-welded a Hummer chassis on it. One of those nasty yellow miniature ones that the Pepperdine trust fund kids pawn off for lines of coke and Adderall."

Pepper rolls her eyes. "Tony."

"I mean, they really wrecked a masterpiece. I don't know how Rhodey was even walking in it. My armor is sexy. He looked like the marshmallow guy from _Ghostbusters_."

Pepper allows herself a tiny smirk at that one, and Tony latches on to it. "Yeah, you like my armor, don't you? You think it's hot. You _were_ really feeling me up there last night on the roof. And on the couch. You've got a thing for it, don't you? Come on, just admit it."

"I'm just surprised you haven't given in to the temptation to add some papier-mâché pecs and _Batman & Robin_ nipples," Pepper replies sweetly.

If anything, his grin gets wider. "Nice. But you can feel the real thing any time. I mean it. Pecs _and_ nipples. Kind of like a two-for-one deal. Four-for-one."

Pepper rolls her eyes at him. "I'll keep that in mind. What are you doing up here, Tony?"

"Other than preparing to indulge your every fantasy?"

"Hilarious."

He opens his mouth as if to respond, and then closes it abruptly. He motions over to the red, silver, and gold plates of metal on the floor with his left hand. "I can't leave this here. Not if I'm gone."

Pepper nods. "Okay."

"I mean, I will-what do you mean, 'okay?'"

"I agree," Pepper tells him quietly. "This isn't the Malibu house. It's not protected."

"Exactly."

"So what do you want to do?"

Tony really looks at her for the first time since she'd entered the room. His eyes go a little wide, and Pepper tries not to squirm as his gaze travels down. "You look good. Seriously. Really hot."

Pepper doesn't know how she's supposed to respond to his little compliments now. Is she supposed to smile at him? Flutter her eyelashes? What does he want her to do? What does she want to do?

She settles for: "Thank you. Focus, please."

His grin tells her she had guessed right. "I'll play ball today, but we're going back to California this afternoon."

Pepper shakes her head. "Can't do that, Tony."

"What are you talking about? Of course we can. That's what I want to do. Vanko's dead-"

"And so are four other people," Pepper interrupts. "People are still in the hospital. This entire situation is _not over_ just because the bad guy is dead, Tony."

"What are we supposed to do? Fly Dummy out from Malibu so he can take a broom and a dustpan to the Hall A?"

He's being willfully short-sighted, and they both know it. "Tony, I'm still CEO. I'm stepping down once this blows over, but-"

"We'll set up trust funds for the families of those who died, we'll fix the damage-"

"That's _not _the point!"

"-There's no reason for us to be here, we can just help the city with cleanup, the lawyers probably made sure we wouldn't be liable for this anyway, and I'm sure SHIELD will smooth everything over-"

"Stop it, Tony."

He quits talking. Looks away.

Pepper is flushed. She hates doing this. "I know you're not that interested in keeping Stark up and running, but someone has to be. Who knows what kind of hit this is going to be? You're right, our lawyers worked out an ironclad contract with the city, but-"

"'Ironclad.' Nice."

She ignores him. "-but someone still needs to be here. And if you're not willing to be the face of your company, then someone has to. And I'm sure I'll take a lot of heat for it. We were having a difficult enough time keeping you installed as CEO, much less me."

The brief moment of peace they'd shared together downstairs has fled. They're adversaries again, and Pepper can't stand it.

"Fine."

She gawks at him. "What do you mean, 'fine?' What does that mean?"

One corner of his mouth quirks up. "Fine. You're right. We'll stay, we'll do a little _pas de deux _for SHIELD, we'll play nice."

"What do you mean? What are you getting at?"

He's still smiling, but there's something she can barely see behind his sunglasses that makes him look a little sad. He steps towards her, reaches out for her hands, which are both planted on her hips.

"I'm sorry."

His voice is quiet, and sounds almost embarrassed.

Pepper has no idea what he's apologizing for. "Tony-"

"I shouldn't have abandoned you. And the company, I mean," he clarifies. "I guess-well, I just knew you'd be the best person for the job. When I was gone."

The soft admission makes her stomach tie up. A rush of adrenaline and warmth radiates from her solar plexus, and she feels suddenly short of breath.

"Well, you're not gone," she finally replies lamely. Her heart is pounding.

"Nope."

Pepper pulls her right hand from his grip, and settles it in the center of his chest, the warmth and hum of the reactor reassuring against her palm. "And you're not going anywhere."

"Nope again. You're on a roll."

"And you're going to let me resign."

"You're saying it's up to me?"

"Tony."

"Are you going to leave Stark-the company-are you going to leave the company altogether? Because I know of like, eight jobs we haven't filled since the Stark Crusade began."

Pepper tilts her head up to look at him. "Nine, and that's exactly the kind of violent language that doesn't look good to Wall Street."

"War. Battle. Decimation. Whatever."

"All of those are more violent, not less."

"Did you know that "decimation" actually means "removal of a tenth," and was a Roman military punishment where nine guys had to kill the tenth guy in their unit?"

"So what does that make your 'crusade' against the board? Semination?"

He wrinkles his nose. "Pepper, inappropriate. Jesus."

Pepper fights the urge to grin and give him a 'well played, Mr. Stark' and instead shoves him a little with her shoulder. "So what do we do with the suit?"

"Nice subject change. Real smooth."

"Thank you. So what do we do with the suit?"

He clears his throat. "I could wear it there. SHIELD, CIA, FBI, Pentagon all in one place. It's a seminal occasion, after all."

"Ha, ha."

He shrugs. "Send Happy with it to Malibu. Have JARVIS ship out another football."

"You're okay with that?"

"Not really."

She sighs. "Tony, I-"

She doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence, because he pulls her against his chest, buries his face against her collarbone. He runs warm. The heat of him pressed against her is more reassuring than she ever thought it could be.

She feels his lips moving against her neck and the vibrations of his throat, but she can't understand him. "What?"

He pulls back, stares directly at her through the brown lenses of his sunglasses, hands gripping his shoulders. "I won't abandon you. Promise."

Her shy smile happens before she can bite it back. "Tony, that's-"

"Well, that's actually not what I said. I was telling your collarbone how sexy it is. But I meant the not-abandoning-you thing, too."

**TBC**


End file.
